Is THIS the Secret Emotion That You Struggle With?

If someone had asked me years ago whether I suffered from depression, my answer would have been an immediate and unequivocal “No.”

Like most of us, I had a very specific image of depression. I thought of it as withdrawal, heaviness, exhaustion, and an inability to engage with life. I imagined someone disappearing into a fog, unable to move forward.

Because I wasn’t experiencing that, I assumed depression had nothing to do with me.

What I understand now is that in the Emotional Liberation work I teach, we explore two common expressions of depression. One is the familiar form that turns inward.

The other is a pattern we refer to as “cold depression”, a form of emotional suffering that often goes unnoticed because it doesn’t look like depression at all.

In fact, it often looks like “Success”.

For much of my career, I was highly driven. I worked as an executive television news producer, was on-air, and worked with National Public Radio (NPR). From the outside, I appeared ambitious, productive, and accomplished.

Inside, however, I was engaged in a constant battle with myself.

There was always another part of myself that seemed to need fixing, another shortcoming to compensate for, another reason to push harder.

A relentless inner critic followed me everywhere, constantly reminding me that I could have done better.

What Is Cold Depression?

We use the term cold depression to describe this pattern of responding to emotional pain through activity rather than withdrawal.

Cold depression isn’t a clinical diagnosis in our Western medicine paradigm. Rather, it’s a way of understanding what can happen when emotional pain is met, not with withdrawal, but with acceleration. Instead of collapsing inward, we push harder. We stay busy, productive, and overstimulated, often without realizing that we are using activity to avoid what we don’t want to feel.

Instead of shutting down, we speed up.

The challenge is that our culture often rewards this behavior. Being busy is celebrated. Productivity is admired. Working harder is seen as evidence of commitment, ambition, and success.

As a result, the very behaviors that may be helping us avoid our pain are often praised by the people around us. That is why this emotional pattern can remain hidden for years.

When Success Becomes an Escape

Looking back, I can see that I wasn’t simply ambitious. I was trying to outrun something.

Beneath the drive was a profound sense of unworthiness. There was a part of me that believed I needed to earn acceptance, prove my value, and justify my existence through achievement.

The problem is that external success can never heal an internal wound.

When someone secretly believes they are not enough, no amount of accomplishment is likely to change that belief. The promotions, praise, recognition, and achievements may provide temporary relief, but they rarely reach the deeper place where the pain lives.

So the cycle continues.

Work harder.

Achieve more.

Feel better for a moment.

Then return to the same underlying sense that something is missing.

This is why many highly successful people remain dissatisfied despite accomplishing everything they once thought would make them happy.

The issue is not a lack of achievement. The issue is that achievement is being asked to solve a problem it was never designed to solve.

The Way Through

Authentic healing often begins when we stop running long enough to become curious about what we’re running from.

That can be uncomfortable. Many of us have spent years building lives around productivity, performance, and proving ourselves. Slowing down may initially feel threatening.

Yet it is often in those quieter moments that we begin to discover what is truly asking for our attention:

The grief we never processed.

The anger we never allowed ourselves to feel.

The shame we never questioned.

The stories about ourselves we accepted as truth.

Meeting What We’ve Been Avoiding

For me, healing began when I stopped trying to outperform my pain and started listening to it instead, as excruciatingly difficult as that was.

I learned that what I had spent years avoiding was not something to conquer, but something to surrender to so I could receive and understand.

If any of this feels familiar, it may be worth asking yourself a simple question:

Are you genuinely moving toward something you love, or have you been running from something you don’t want to feel?

The answer may reveal more than you expect.

With Love,

Becca

P.S. If this reflection resonates with you, next month I’ll be hosting my monthly Elevation Ceremony, a gathering designed to create intentional space for reflection, healing, and renewed direction.

Through guided practices, community connection, and the (optional) mindful use of cannabis as a tool for insight and self-exploration, we create an opportunity to step out of the momentum of everyday life and listen more deeply to what is asking for your attention. I’d be honored to have you join us.